Freedom: a cornerstone

Groyne, Monifieth, Angus

There has been a loose direction for a few months and with diversions, arising from what happened in February. It started from the themes of coercion, control, imposition, manipulation, force, stress and has nosed towards the attendant ideas of refusal and acceptance. 

The possibility of refusal or acceptance comes from "freedom from" those noxious subjects, from which comes "freedom to".

It is only once there is that freedom that one can make independent choices and from that, that there can be a possibility of good things happening.  So, I want to restate that “the absolute cornerstone of milonga culture is freedom of discreet invitation and equally discreet acceptance or refusal.” 

Freedom in the milonga and in life  can be alarming when one doesn't know what is possible, when one lacks experience, essentially, or guidance.  In life too, freedom can be overwhelming. But freedom leads to creativity, to connection, to magic in ways hard to describe, precisely because freedom is not about boxes and labels and pigeonholing. 

With notable exceptions humans are adaptable, intuitive, aware of their surroundings and good at improvisation and yet the signs put up by controlling types would lead invading aliens to believe that we are a species whose fundamental moronity is at odds with some of our great ideas, inventions and achievements.

Particularly tickling are the signs whose absurdity evokes an obvious pathetic belief, on the part of those who decided they were necessary, in their own importance. In the photo above, the groyne was blindingly obvious and not high. The danger was more in falling in the rocky descent to the beach; or from the sea itself, or from the nearby firing range, onto which, due to a surprising lack of signage, I nearly walked. But the council clearly disliked the expansiveness, the potential for freedom of the beach, the notion that it might, who knows, give people ideas. The council, then, disliking its own absence in a place largely rule-free, felt, as it so often does, that it must be at least seen to be present and controlling. These people never realise that such signs - until we come to accept them - only serve to undermine their so-called authority, mockery being the fastest and most degrading route to a fall from power.

Freedom includes freedom to explore and so much of what happens in the milonga and in life is about discovering ones preferences and avoiding what one dislikes with tact and ease and confidence. Some of the most interesting observable behaviour and some of the best stories from the milonga are around these subjects more than the dancing itself.